The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which celebrates its 20th anniversary this week, is not a peace, but a truce. This does not mean that it has no value. Most people in Northern Ireland wish to abide by its terms; it has helped them get on with normal life. But it does mean that difference, rather than being
What is it, psychologically, that makes it so hard for Jeremy Corbyn to recognise that some of his supporters are horrible people with horrible views (in this case, raving anti-Semites)? I remember asking myself the same question, in the early 1980s, about Tony Benn. I used to attend Labour party conferences and their numerous left-wing
At last Jeremy Corbyn is being made to pay a price for Labour’s anti-Semitism under his leadership. It has now, for the first time, become definitely hard for him to get through mainstream interviews. He is challenged, and although his answers bend to the wind of criticism a little, this affords him no respite. His repeated
For almost as long as I can remember, Eurosceptic Tory MPs have been defined by the media as ‘head-bangers’. As a result, few notice that they scarcely bang their heads at all these days. The European Research Group (ERG), now led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, is surprisingly united, and makes most of its arguments blande suaviterque.
Gimson’s Prime Ministers, out this week, is a crisp and stylish account of every one of them. I happened to be reading Andrew Gimson’s admiring essay on George Canning (PM for 119 days in 1827) just after Jeremy Corbyn’s parliamentary remarks about the Salisbury poisoning. The way Mr Corbyn talked, one got the impression that
Almost eight million people have now watched Cathy Newman’s Channel 4 News interview with Jordan Peterson. This figure must be unique in the history of Channel 4 News online. Only a few minutes were broadcast on the original news programme, but Channel 4 then put out the full half-hour on YouTube, perhaps miscalculating the effects
Jeremy Corbyn wants Britain to ‘stay in a customs union’, according to the BBC. The phrase does not make sense. We could possibly stay in the customs union, if the EU decided to let us, but that is not the policy of his party or of the government. We cannot ‘stay’ in ‘a’ customs union,
Bev died, aged 61. She was the wife of ‘Foxy’ John, kennel huntsman of our local hunt. Bev was the matriarch of the clan, with six children, 14 grandchildren, and other young people in need of help whom she cared for. Both John and Bev have Traveller ‘heritage’. That requires a Traveller funeral. Only the
The Queen is Head of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is headquartered in London, in the splendour of Marlborough House. The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Lady Scotland, is British (and also Dominican). Britain is about to take the chair of the Commonwealth for the customary two years, and so the next Heads of Government Conference —
A reader writes: ‘In my last letter, I called you a numbskull. However I should have qualified this with “sometimes you are a numbskull”.’ I must apologise for an example of my sometimes-numbskullery in this column last week when I asserted that Joe Chamberlain had opposed votes for women in Parliament in 1917. This would have
A hundred years ago on Tuesday, King George V assented to the Representation of the People Act. Women got the vote for the first time. In all the commentary on this centenary, little has been said about who gave it to them, presumably because the answer — Lloyd George’s Conservative-dominated wartime coalition — does not
‘Dignity lost half its value yesterday’ began a news story in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph. As I read on, it turned out that Dignity is a large firm of undertakers, but I had momentarily taken these opening words as a general statement about our times. As such, they seem well supported by the facts. As I
The BBC programme The Coronation, on Sunday evening, was extremely interesting, principally, of course, because of the Queen’s appearance on it. But what was left out was notable. The programme gave a careful narrative, and some explanation, of the stages of the service and of the jewels and regalia (the Queen’s main supporting actors in
Gavin Stamp, who died just before the year’s end, will be mourned by many Spectator readers. For years, particularly in the 1980s, he was the paper’s main voice on architectural questions, notably as they affected the public space. His voice, both angry and compassionate, would be raised whenever he thought someone in authority — in
The doctrine of progress implies that things get better. This is clearly true in terms of scientific knowledge, though not necessarily of how that scientific knowledge is applied. It has proved broadly true, in our lifetimes, about economic and political freedom, though not so decisively that we can all sit back and relax. Is it
I’m afraid I have a deep faith in the Democratic Unionist Party’s capacity to cede an issue of principle in return for more gold, baubles, Renewable Heat Incentives etc. It may well give in, after receiving some bung, in a few days. But its resistance, at the time of writing, to the idea of ‘regulatory
We are congratulating ourselves and the royal family on overcoming prejudice by welcoming Meghan Markle’s engagement to Prince Harry. But in fact this welcome is cost-free: Ms Markle’s combination of Hollywood, mixed ethnicity, divorced parents, being divorced herself and being older than her fiancé ticks almost every modern box. It was harder, surely, for Kate Middleton.
Windsor Castle on Monday night sounds like a children’s party magnified. The rooms were filled with golden-leaved trees. A giant block of ice carved with the initials of the Queen on one side and the Duke of Edinburgh on the other dominated the reception room. Her sons wore their Windsor coats. A magician made a
Although we all see rather too much of the present Mr Speaker, it was a good innovation that he and Lord Fowler, the Speaker of the House of Lords, laid wreaths at the Cenotaph on Sunday. It seems odd this never happened before: a parliamentary tribute is fitting. Since we shall soon, God willing, recover
Let us assume — which we shouldn’t — that it is automatically wrong for the Queen to benefit financially from funds invested offshore. Let us agree — though we shouldn’t — to declare ourselves shocked that the Duchy of Lancaster put money on her behalf into funds in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and later,
